Random Notes: Martha Washington, The Huntington, and More

3 March 2016

The Virginia Newspaper Project has a few new additions to Virginia Chronicle, but before we get to that, we’d like to direct you to an interesting article, “The Battle For Martha Washington’s Will,” by Caitlin Conley, which effectively demonstrates how Virginia Chronicle can be used for historical research.

Now onto the new stuff. . .

The Huntington Library in lovely San Marino, California has a strong collection of early Virginia newspapers. In a moment you will see why this is good news for Virginia newspaper researchers.

The Huntington Library in San Marino, California

The Huntington collection not only contains substantial runs of papers that fill gaps in preexisting holdings here at the Library, for example the Petersburg Republican published from 1819-1820, but it also has titles with no known copies in Virginia, such as Church Bells, a religious weekly published in Richmond in 1893.

Many of the titles in Huntington’s collection are “specimen” newspapers, meaning there is only a single copy, or a handful of copies, that the Huntington holds for any number of reasons. And as mentioned above, many of these specimen papers are not held in the collections of any Virginia institution, making access to them all the more important.

Thanks to a great cooperative project with the Huntington, many of these newspapers are available on Virginia Chronicle and will continue to be added in the coming months. Here are some of the latest Huntington titles added to Virginia Chronicle:Look for these next week. . .